Brazil's BNDES Removes Head of Amazon Fund That's Under Scrutiny
Brazil's BNDES Removes Head of Amazon Fund That's Under Scrutiny
(Bloomberg) -- Brazil’s state development bank BNDES removed the person overseeing its Amazon Fund after the environment minister alleged inconsistencies at the conservation initiative.
Daniela Baccas was transferred to a different department on Friday, according to the BNDES press office. It didn’t provide more information behind the decision to move her and no replacement was named. Baccas, whose LinkedIn profile showed she was chief of the bank’s environment department since mid-2017, wasn’t immediately reachable via the platform for comment.
Environment Minister Ricardo Salles on Friday gave his diagnosis of the fund, saying there were contracts that were riddled with inconsistencies, according to local media. The issue will be “debated openly,’’ he said Saturday on Twitter.
The Amazon Fund has received donations of 1.89 billion reais ($461 million) –- chiefly from the Norwegian government and German development bank KfW -- to finance projects aimed at protecting the environment and reducing greenhouse gases, according to its website.
If the amount of money the Amazon Fund has disbursed so far is acceptable, “that’s great,’’ Salles said. “Otherwise, we’re going to correct what is necessary.’’
President Jair Bolsonaro’s government is trying to reshape Brazil’s environmental policy, and has repeatedly expressed a desire to develop the Amazon, particularly with mining. He has railed against environmental organizations and regulators that he says act as “an industry of fines.’’
His proposals for the world’s largest tropical rainforest are anathema to activists who view it as a repository for biodiversity and of global importance for arresting climate change. The allegations made by Salles and his attack on an environmental institution feed the distrust of donors and the result may be less contributions to Brazil, Observatorio do Clima, a local NGO, said in a statement.
The Amazon Fund has achieved significant results in the past decade and has transparent governance, Norway’s embassy in Brazil said in a statement. It said it hasn’t received any proposal from Brazilian authorities to alter the fund’s governance structure nor criteria for allocating resources.
“The Amazon Fund has become one of the best global practices in financing the conservation and sustainable use of forests, and has inspired similar climate finance partnerships around the world,’’ the embassy said.
The idea the Amazon is world heritage is “nonsense,” Bolsonaro’s top security advisor, General Augusto Heleno Pereira, said in an interview this month. Rather, it is meant for the Brazil’s benefit, he said.
To contact the reporter on this story: David Biller in Rio de Janeiro at dbiller1@bloomberg.net
To contact the editors responsible for this story: Juan Pablo Spinetto at jspinetto@bloomberg.net, Shamim Adam, John McCluskey
©2019 Bloomberg L.P.